


stuck in nintendo, you're the controller

by redlight



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Cuddling & Snuggling, Experimental Style, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, IDK WHY IM JUST WRITING MELANCHOLY FLUFF FOR THEM, Introspection, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Platonic Cuddling, Stream of Consciousness, pre-season 6 episode 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24581329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight
Summary: Jeff used to rip his toys apart when he was a kid. Not out of malice—but out of overuse. Overlove.
Relationships: Abed Nadir & Jeff Winger, Abed Nadir/Jeff Winger
Comments: 8
Kudos: 141





	stuck in nintendo, you're the controller

**Author's Note:**

> honk honk im still a clown

He used to rip his toys apart when he was younger, maybe. Not out of malice, not out of tantrumic terror—though he did certainly have those moments—but out of overuse. Overlove.

Jeff played with his wretched little G. I. Joe figures until the damn cheap plastic heads fell off from repeated blunt force trauma, assault and battery. Sure, they're indestructible one way, plastic toys from the '80s that stand up the test of time as collector's items and family heirlooms and yard sale relics and eBay stowaways. But they're like diamonds that way—he couldn't snap an action figure's arm in half, not with childhood strength, but he could pop the heads off without a struggle.

The point is, he didn't break his toys out of malice. He did because he liked them too much. He put too much pressure, too much time, too much use into them.

Not to say Jeff tries to treat people like toys today—well, maybe he used to, a little, a lot, as a lawyer. Maybe he used to get a little too caught up in pulling strings and stitches apart, seeing the flight and fright of any witness-expert-defendant on the stand, any prosecutor worth their salt seething at him with shaky cigarette hands that try to hand him a smoke during recess.

He doesn't smoke, no, he takes too much care of his body for that, but—well. no. the point is—

People aren't toys. Going to Greendale taught him that more than ever, that people aren't playthings, that he can't incite his favorite reaction and then throw them off to the side. That's not what being a good person is about. That's not what—who he wants to be anymore.

Sometimes his teeth hurt though, with the loving too hard.

He doesn't mean to, y'know? He didn't rip the heads off his toys on purpose. He just loved them too much. And sometimes, sometimes, when his guts twist and turn and the butterflies settle into scaly corpses at the bottom of his stomach pit, then Jeff does shit. Bad shit. Yells at his friends, turns his back on them, recovers his guts in a glass too many of scotch.

He's trying to be better. He's trying to be better. But it takes learning.

See, this though—

Being with Abed makes him scared.

Abed is—Britta likes to think he's the innocent one, and that's not really right, not really right at all, but even Jeff can't deny the surge of hot protectiveness he feels over Abed. Abed takes things directly, points to his favorite movies, makes it make sense, and that—that movie logic, desperation for real life to follow flimsy film rules—that's pretty innocent. control freakish, maybe, but with naivety in its undertones.

Pretending isn't _pretending_ with Abed because it's not pretend—it's paraphrasing. It's making relationships make sense. It's making interaction feasible.

It's letting Jeff stay over a little too long, Annie in her room studying, as Abed runs his long dainty fingers over an old game controller (that used to be Troy's, except he left, and Jeff stopped pointing it out after Abed went too still and Annie glared at him so hard he nearly combusted) before he turns and asks if Jeff wants to play too. It's trying to show him the Dreamatorium, cardboard folds and orange grid tape, and making it into a world of any design they'd like.

Maybe Jeff just keeps going over. He doesn't wanna admit that he's been getting lonely, since Shirley left. doesn't wanna admit that the school has been shifting and changing too much, that he spins in dizzy drunk circles over the thoughts of his rotating students, over how Annie and Abed and Britta and _everyone everyone everyone_ is going to leave eventually. Community college isn't a home, it's a transition, after all.

Still. Still. Still.

Abed and Annie let him come over way too much. Jeff still feels a little weird, tries not to be too close to Annie, to the odd sweet-scare-stir of feeling that pulses in his chest whenever he looks at her, pretty dedication in her eyes and grown up shoes and no more skirts. She's an adult, of course, and she's changed, and Jeff should feel gross—and he does feel gross—but he's pretty proud of her, these days, too.

And Abed—

Maybe it should be the same thing. Maybe it should be more so, the guilt, the grossness, but something's been hurting in Abed ever since he kept seeing lava, and Jeff sometimes worries the lava never went away, with how Abed still fidgets away from the corner edges of the floor, how he tends to touch the back of his hand to the study room doorknob before turning it as though to check the heat of the metal.

And Jeff is selfish, Jeff is self-destructive, shit, but he still keeps coming over. He lets Abed touch the backs of his hands to check for burns and he lefts Abed fall asleep on his shoulder after rambling too much about the flaws and triumphs of the _Star Wars_ games in comparison to the movies, and how he isn't enthusiastic about Disney's buying of the franchise but he'll certainly be giving them money anyway, until eventually Abed's motor mouth and over 20 hours straight of being awake finally nudges him into unconsciousness, his slight frame weighing nothing against Jeff's chest.

Abed's skin is soft. Abed's hair is soft too, though it's always just a little greasy from late nights. Abed doesn't like falling asleep on Jeff while watching TV 'cause Abed thinks it should be impossible to fall asleep while watching TV but he'll sleep if Jeff manages to con his way into watching soccer. His eyelashes flutter and brush against his cheeks and his jaw goes slack and he drools a little, and Jeff is so disgustingly endeared that he'll gather Abed's skinny limbs up in his arms and take him to his room and tuck him into bed.

Jeff sleeps on the couch. Annie makes fun of him for it. He doesn't find it in himself to care enough. 

He brings over his own controller next time.


End file.
